


invent our own kind of obscurity

by nrbrwn



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:07:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26496886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nrbrwn/pseuds/nrbrwn
Summary: Astoria doesn’t understand why Malfoy is attending her sixth year Muggle Studies class, and she understands why she keeps finding herself trying to talk to him even less. If anything, this term’s topic of Muggle cooking might at least get rid of those awful hollow cheeks of his. Or something.
Relationships: Astoria Greengrass/Draco Malfoy, Past Draco/Pansy
Comments: 13
Kudos: 41





	1. we can drain out all the power

It’s not like she’s staring.

Well, it’s not like she’s being rude about it, and if she is, then so is everybody else in her Muggle Studies class. Which, one could say, might make it worse, but it’s curious, is all. More interesting than anything else that’s happened since Astoria’s returned for her sixth year, that’s for sure. Because, if one chose to ignore the giant elephant in the room of, in her mother’s words, that terribly embarrassing affair of a war over the past year, and it being virtually impossible to ignore the gaps of empty desks here and there, returning to Hogwarts had been an almost painfully ordinary ordeal.

Daphne had resumed her place in Pansy Parkinson’s posse, none of the teachers seemed to be fazed by the fact that a war had passed if one were to judge by the number of essays Astoria had yet to work on, and her fellow Slytherin house mates were still offering her the same disgusted looks whenever they found her sitting at the Ravenclaw table, having breakfast with Raghu Kamath, who was explaining how the handheld console he had gotten for his birthday plays games in colour now.

Therefore, Astoria could hardly be blamed for the way her eyes had immediately latched onto the tensed figure of the boy that was seated in the front of the class when she had entered the Muggle Studies classroom that morning. Really, it was only natural. Which she immediately felt slightly terrible for, as she then had to watch every one of the students that had yet to enter stop in their tracks and stare at him unabashedly, either not noticing or caring that his shoulders only rode up higher while he appeared to be distracted, scribbling down something furiously on a foot of parchment.

“Good morning, students,” a wobbly, old voice by the door calls, and Astoria is forced to raise her gaze to the elderly woman standing where the voice had come from.

The last time Astoria had attended the Muggle Studies class, she had had the delight of being informed of the Muggles’ disgraceful existence and their rotten way of living, which had lead to Astoria finding the lecture’s primary use in the scribbled creation of, in her humble opinion, masterpieces such as Alecto Carrow being sucked up by a vacuum cleaner. Unless the new professor had literal Muggle limbs in the leather tote that was straining at the seams, she hardly had much to live up to. Although, Astoria _had_ grown rather fond of depicting Professor Carrow just vaguely enough so that she could not be punished for it.

The new professor is in the process of spelling her name on the blackboard when Abigail Hewlett raises her hand two desks next to Astoria. This effectively causes the heads of the people that aren’t too occupied with trying to sneak a glance at the new student’s forearm to swivel in her direction.

“Yes?” Professor Stiner stares intently onto the clipboard she is holding in one of her hands, her left index finger scrolling through the list of names, Astoria assumes. “Miss Hewlett, is it?”

“Yes, Professor. I wanted to ask,” Abigail starts, her posh accent echoing through the room, “What is _he_ doing here?” At her words, all heads in turn whirl in the direction Astoria’s own had been pointed at only moments before, the rapid motion of each head almost comical to the young Slytherin. He is still writing on the same piece of parchment, seemingly not listening, his white hair a stark contrast against the back of his robes.

A low rumble of murmurs had broken out at Abigail’s words, a smug smile playing on the girl’s lips when the professor clears her throat, demanding the class’s attention. “You will have to ask the headmistress if you have to know, Miss. Or simply ask the boy.”

At this, Abigail looks less than happy, however does not inquire any further. Instead, she levels the professor with an icy glare, mumbling something to her friends that Astoria cannot make out, but causes the girls next to her to shriek in something that is supposed to resemble laughter. Professor Stiner, however, does not seem to notice the sudden noise in the class, now scribbling something along the name her finger had stopped at. 

The rest of the lesson goes without incident. This year they would be discovering how Muggles manage to cook without magic, their first introduction to electricity. Astoria had had her own run-ins with Muggle cooking, experience varying between disastrous and only half lost to the crust at the bottom of the pot.

When the class concludes, Astoria does not fail to notice that the student that had sat in front of her is the first to flee the class, his bag packed before the professor had even concluded her lesson, his steps just slow enough to not be considered running.

The second he is out of sight, students at every desk erupt in loud discussion as to why Draco Malfoy had decided to attend their sixth-year Muggle Studies class. 

* * *

After class that morning, Astoria does not see Malfoy again until she makes her way to the Great Hall for dinner. She had just been at the hospital wing, stocking up on her potions after a clumsy Hufflepuff had mishandled their young Venomous Tentacula, causing it to shoot out venom that managed to cover not only Astoria, but also the other two Slytherins standing next to her. When they had arrived at the hospital wing, the other two students were given an antidote after which they could return to their lesson. Astoria, however, had the pleasure of remaining in the hospital wing for the rest of the day, Madam Pomfrey too concerned about her malediction possibly reacting to remnants of the venom to release the remaining Slytherin from her grip.

Astoria had known the other students were going to talk about her when the other two returned to the Herbology lesson, would poke fun at her weakness and the way she was probably taking full advantage of her little inconvenience.

She could not blame them. After all, she had refused to confide to anyone the way her veins are now a shocking blue against her porcelain skin, even hours after the antidote had been taken, the way it feels like knives coursing through her body when she stops to think about it.

Entering the Great Hall without much of an appetite, she makes her way towards her sister, who has Pansy Parkinson sitting to her right, the space left to her vacant. Occasionally, she would join Raghu at the Ravenclaw table for dinner, but Astoria does not think she could bear any more eyes focused on herself right then.

Daphne looks up as Astoria approaches, a hesitant smile turning up the corners of her mouth. “Tori,” she says, and pats the place to her left. “I saved you a seat. I didn’t know whether Pomfrey would ever let you out of her disinfected claws.”

Astoria takes the offered seat on the bench and loads her plate with different foods she does not crave. She can feel her sister’s gaze on her, no matter how much she is pretending to be interested in her shepherd’s pie.

They are weird now, things between Daphne and her. There had always been things they had not dared to discuss, things they so vehemently disagreed on, even refused to acknowledge, but somehow, Astoria had been naïve enough to consider that with the war over, they would be able to face their truths.

Astoria had always had an, in her family’s eyes, unhealthy fascination with most things Muggle, albeit not as outwardly as others were being. Daphne, however, had been declared Pansy Parkinson’s best friend the day they had met at Parkinson Palace, which hasn’t been a palace since some long-lost Parkinson had drunkenly gambled it away. Astoria knew that her sister had never believed in blood supremacy as strongly as some of her friends do, however, she had still found a believable enough reason to not accompany Astoria when she had asked Daphne to explore Muggle London a month after Harry Potter had killed the greatest wizard of all time with a disarming charm. She had been foolish to think that people like Daphne would have a change of heart the second You-Know--, Voldemort had hit the ground, no matter how much Astoria had liked to think they would.

Her eyes travel down the expanse of the table.

“Why is he on his own?”

“Who, Malfoy?” Daphne moves her head to where he is sitting as well, several empty spaces separating him from the rest of the house. From where the sisters are sitting, he looks almost ill in the moonlight shining down from the bewitched ceiling, catching in his hair, which had looked striking and exotic before but is now making him look washed out. “Nott says he thinks he’s too good for us, now that The Boy Who Lived’s gone and saved his arse.”

Astoria turns her attention back to the pie in front of her, her brows slightly creased. The way Malfoy looks like he hadn’t been outside until he had been forced to ride the train, he does not look like he’d think he would be better than about anyone. His grey-tinged complexion would also explain the very little the _Daily Prophet_ had been able to gossip about him and the rest of his family over the summer.

Actually, everyone knew where his father was. 

“We don’t talk to him, little Greengrass,” comes a voice from Daphne’s other side. Pansy has a habit of pretending Astoria is part of their little crowd whenever it suits her, especially now that purebloods without any ties to snakeface have become in vogue. Being the younger sister of the best friend of a person such as Pansy Parkinson does come with an abundance of information Astoria could use to her advantage. Occasionally, she wonders whether it is the only reason she does not attempt to torment Astoria any longer.

“I’m not talking to him; I’m talking _about_ him.” Her eyes flit to the conversation topic of their own accord, and Astoria briefly wonders who of the two is moving the food around their plate more convincingly.

“We don’t do that either.” Astoria finally lifts her gaze from where Malfoy is sitting, instead moving towards the little she can see of Pansy behind her sister’s profile. Her black hair is barely touching her shoulders now, longer than she usually lets it grow, her stubby nose so high the younger of the two wonders how she can still see past it. She is the very embodiment of how precious little things have changed over the summer.

“If you say so,” Astoria says, trying for amused. A war had come and went, and Pansy Parkinson still seems to be under the impression that she could boss people around. The Dark Lord has been defeated, but Astoria’s parents still attend all the pureblood balls, throwing galleons at causes they do not believe in any more than they did before it was the thing to do. She takes her first and final bite of the pie, pushes it away from her and digs her nails into her palms under the long table, until she stops noticing the way her veins still pound against her skin.

She wonders whether Draco Malfoy had refused to accompany his parents as well.

* * *

“Wednesdays are group work days,” Astoria says two days later, taking the place next to Malfoy’s in class. She pulls out the piece of parchment she had used in the last lesson, and the quill Daphne had given her for her birthday. When Malfoy does not respond, she looks at the contents of his own desk, her eyes quickly locking in on a quill with a peculiar looking feather.

“You have an interesting taste in stationary.” She raises her gaze to his face, and from this close, she can see the dark circles under his eyes, his cheeks hollower than she remembers, his face, impossibly, even pointier. “I’ve never seen a white peacock before.”

Of course, she knows of the Malfoy’s infamous obsession with white peacocks, merely another way of flashing their fortune. She had visited Malfoy’s home only the once when Astoria had not yet started at Hogwarts, anticipations high after Uncle Orville had exclaimed that the peacocks were the only creatures at Malfoy Manor that deserved their pure plumage, the other residents’ hair colour a betrayal of their true nature after one too many glasses of Ogden’s. However, it had either been too dark the evening they had arrived for whatever cause they had been invited for, or the peacocks had been another of her uncle’s exaggerated stories, as Astoria had had to realise with disappointment.

“We are lucky, until last term sixth year Muggle Studies consisted of nothing but Muggle hygiene,” Astoria goes on, shuddering visibly. 

Muggle hygiene had been turned into NEWT standard after Nic Stewart - a Gryffindor a year above Astoria’s with more ambition than wits - had made use of his apparition training to get into the London sewers. He’d been in the hospital wing for a week from the sheer trauma of it, or so others had claimed the day he’d returned with bits of toilet paper stuck in places Astoria preferred not to think about.

“I hear-“

“It’s part of my sentence.” He has his gaze trained on the empty blackboard in front of them, sharp jaw clenched so tightly Astoria wonders how she cannot hear it creaking.

“Excuse me?”

“That’s why you’re talking to me. I’m to take this joke of a class and become the blood traitor they’ll expect us to be. Although, you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, Greengrass?”

Malfoy’s face is the perfect picture of apathy, still staring at that same spot, his posture giving off a lazy quality that Astoria finds difficult to connect to the cold undertones in his voice.

“If you think that gets you out of group work, you have yet to find out how nasty we Greengrasses can get,” Astoria retorts, distantly proud of the lightness that remains in her voice. She is not intimidated by him, never has been, but she’s heard stories about him and the war, each more contradictive than the next. Inwardly, she curses herself for how hopeful the ones in which he helped the Boy Who Lived, even infinitesimally, make her feel.

She hears a huff of breath escape him that could be interpreted as a snort but probably isn’t, his face as stony as before. What and whether he is going to reply she does not find out, as Professor Stiner chooses this moment to enter the room, ordering the pairs to copy the words she is proceeding to write on the blackboard. A step-by-step explanation of how to use muggle appliances, followed by the information that they would be invited to practice their theory that evening in the kitchens if they were interested in doing so.

While someone is reading a passage off their book, explaining the virtues of a mixer, Astoria thinks back to Malfoy’s words, whose meaning she had not missed. The day Pansy Parkinson had snatched the letter from Arielle, Daphne’s owl, was more than three years ago, a war ago. The pretty owl had pecked at Pansy’s hand, who was swatting at it absent-mindedly as she screeched the words Astoria’s father had written, asking Daphne to remind her little sister that electing Muggle Studies was not the thing to do for a wizard of her status, and could she please stop associating with the lowly Ravenclaw muggle. Surely, these charity projects cannot be the way a Greengrass chooses to waste her noble heritage.

Astoria had been barely capable of hearing the words that filled the Great Hall that was growing ever more silent, or her sister’s efforts of retrieving the letter from her friend. She was transfixed by the blood that was cascading down Pansy’s fist around the letter, bruised by the pecks the owl had caused, the colour severe against her pale skin. The owl that Daphne had received after the Hogwarts letter had arrived at the estate, the owl her older sister had named after the protagonist of her favourite story Astoria had recited to her, never telling her she had first read it in a book she had found in their uncle’s study, the lovely depictions within not moving at all.

“I expect you will not let me down, Malfoy,” she says when the students start filtering out of the class, Malfoy already with his bag over his shoulder.

“That’s just your problem, then.” 

“You won’t.”

He turns to where Astoria is gathering her things, slowed by the stinging sensation in her muscles she sometimes experiences when she hasn’t eaten in a while. His eyes are narrowed, and he looks like he is about to say something. Appearing to have changed his mind, he leaves the room wordlessly, leaving Astoria the last student still in class.

* * *

Daphne is sitting on the sofa opposite Astoria’s with Pansy and Tracey Davis, the other member of the posse that had returned to Hogwarts. The Slytherin common room is looking particularly gloomy this evening, the shadows of the giant squid’s tentacles darkening the walls every now and then. The three girls do not seem to care, giggling carelessly at the letter Pansy is reading aloud, words Blaise Zabini had written to her about his exploits in France, and then Italy, whose family had thought it wise to leave the country for a while.

Astoria is writing down her findings on the same piece of parchment of that afternoon. Malfoy had not come to join the rest of the volunteering students in the kitchens that evening, and so she had been left to join another pair and work on the assignment in turns.

“I cannot believe I am living vicariously through Zabini’s escapades. Father thinks it unwise to leave, _I_ think there’s nothing left for us here.” Astoria’s gaze is still focused on the scroll, although her attention has now shifted to figuring out how to most effectively draw a bob on the sketch of a decidedly unsightly pug. “What about you, little Greengrass? Aren’t you happy to be back here?”

Pansy’s eyes are flashing in the form of a challenge, and Astoria knows what she is really asking, whether she is glad Hogwarts is back to its original state, that people like Raghu have returned and are no longer in hiding. Frankly, it makes Astoria feel rather ill.

“Leave her alone, Pansy.” It is her sister that interferes then, who is looking as uncomfortable as one can possibly look.

Pansy raises her brows, and against all of Astoria’s expectations, appears to decide to leave her be for the time being. Whether she had simply been startled that Daphne had bothered to defend her sister at all, she does not know. Astoria briefly remembers Daphne telling her that they’ll stick together from now on, minutes after they’d heard the war was won - or lost, Astoria isn’t sure - but until now, she had seen no such proof.

The three older Slytherins are once again engulfed in gossiping about other students in their year that had not returned, and Astoria takes advantage of their shift in attention to finish an Astronomy essay she still had to finish, analysing the mythology that surrounds the constellations in the southern hemisphere, specifically the neighbouring stars Lupus, Ara, Scorpius, and Norma.

Astoria is deciding whether she prefers the myth surrounding Ara in which Cronus swallows all of his children whole, or the one in which Lycaon attempts to feed Zeus a dismembered child, when the door to the common room opens and Malfoy walks in and promptly makes a beeline for the boys’ dormitories. It is just ten minutes past curfew, and Astoria does not care where he’d been.

Neither does Pansy, apparently, who finally leaves a few minutes later and also makes a beeline for the boys’ dormitories. Astoria catches the looks shared between her sister and Tracey, all incredulous eyebrows and a resigned shaking of heads, and Astoria does not care about that, either.

Later, when Astoria is rubbing the ointments Madam Pomfrey had handed her earlier in the hospital wing, the door slams open again, and a whirlwind of black hair and tear-stained cheeks pushes past her. Only after she slams her hands on either side of the basin, her breath almost coming out controlled again, does Pansy notice the other Slytherin in the girls’ bathroom. Immediately, her nose rises so high Astoria can see inside of its reflection and she swipes the dried, black tear tracks off like she’s found a speck of dust on her blouse.

Astoria is certain that her presence will not even be acknowledged, but then Pansy’s eyes snap to hers in the mirror, narrowing until the younger Greengrass is reminded of an angry version of her early doodle.

“If you tell anyone, Greengrass, I will destroy you.” The younger of the two can still hear remnants of Pansy’s outbreak in her voice, although the latter does a formidable job of covering any trace of weakness with the pure acid her tone is laced with.

“And how would you do that?” Astoria asks lightly, and this time she doesn’t even have to try. The, admittedly embarrassing, phase during which Astoria had ever been intimidated by the Parkinson heiress had long passed.

Pansy removes her tight grip on the basin and closes in on her, chests almost brushing, and for a second Astoria actually speculates whether the other girl is going to hit her. Whether it is due to her current state of distress or because Astoria looks a lot more tough than she realistically knows she does she cannot decipher, however she has to admit to her slight relief when Pansy merely allows for a frustrated huff to escape her before she starts to fix her appearance in front of the wall of mirrors again.

As she regards the other girl aggressively wiping at her puffy cheeks, she is momentarily struck speechless. Never before has Astoria witnessed Pansy admitting defeat in a fight, which is the excuse she uses as to why it takes her so long to figure out the reason for the other Slytherin’s lacklustre performance.

Pansy’s infatuation with Malfoy had never been a secret, as far as Astoria knows, she has been threatening other girls who so much as speak to the boy since they have first been forced to associate as toddlers. Astoria still vividly remembers the nightmare of pink fabric that had been Pansy’s attire at the Yule Ball when she had burst into her shared room with Daphne, screeching that Draco had kissed her, he’d kissed her, finally she can stake claim officially! She also remembers how it had taken Daphne a few too many seconds to react when she, just moments before, had begrudgingly relayed to her younger sibling how Potter’s muggle friend had looked so beautiful even Draco had had to pick his jaw up from the ballroom floor. 

Knowing all of this, Astoria can say she has a good idea of what has gotten Parkinson’s panties all up in a twist, and even though she knows that, really, she is so much better than this, she cannot stop herself from claiming this small victory, which is why she only slightly feels like the pettiest girl in all of Hogwarts when she asks, “Did Malfoy not want to kiss you good night?”.

At this, Pansy pauses, an impressive eyebrow raised as her eyes slide across to Astoria’s in the mirror.

“For a Slytherin, you really are dreadfully slow,” she starts and proceeds to extract a make-up bag from her robes that is so large Astoria has to assume the pockets must be charmed, “Whatever would I have to gain still from consorting with a Malfoy? I must have a word with your sister, how Daphne managed to fail you so exceptionally is beyond me.”

The blasé sound of her voice is betrayed by something bitter underneath, and Astoria notes how her voice falters so insignificantly when she mentions Malfoy anyone who was not looking for it would simply miss it.

After that, none of the Slytherin girls seem to have anything left to say to the other, so Astoria returns to rubbing in her potions and braiding her hair out of sheer spite. Similarly, Pansy is seemingly poised for following her night-time regime stoically and refusing to leave the room first in a passive act of dominance. Eventually, as the silence continues save for the occasional brushing of hair or washing of hands, Astoria begins to feel foolish for rising to her bait even for a second and promptly summons her toiletries before leaving the bathroom without a word of goodbye.

Astoria does not fully understand why but feels irrationally annoyed at Pansy Parkinson’s dismissal of Malfoy. After her public proposal to leave Harry Potter to the wolves, figuratively and literally, she cannot imagine that the Parkinsons have any more favours left to ask than the Malfoys do. If the conversation that had transpired between her and Theo Nott’s father over the summer that she had overheard is any indication.

The next morning at breakfast finds her back at Daphne's left side, her sister offering the occasional sound of interest as Parkinson rambles on in the same self-important tone that any high-born Slytherin except for Astoria has magically, for lack of a better word, been bestowed with at birth. Any sign of the previous night's occurrence has evidently vanished and Pansy's posse, and in extension Astoria, is still seated at the same spot that Pansy had claimed the very first day at Hogwarts, but Astoria notes that Malfoy has attempted to scoot even further away from the rest of the students. In contrast to dinner, today he does not even care to pretend to eat, the clean plate abandoned to the side while the Slytherin boy's eyes are uninterestedly scrolling through the pages of a dusty tome. Astoria scolds herself when she starts to worry about Malfoy's lack of appetite, the hollow of his cheeks even more apparent in the stark morning light. Absently, she pokes her spoon around her own bowl of oatmeal when she startles, because she had failed to notice the way her sister's attention had shifted to her instead, a frown distorting her aristocratic features as her head follows Astoria's previous line of sight. 

The younger sister clears her throat, forces a spoonful of the oatmeal down her throat, and tells herself to stop feeling concern for the boy who stands for everything she hates. When Daphne's gaze is again trained onto her best friend, Astoria also tells herself that she had imagined the way his eyes flick away from her own as she glances at Malfoy once more. 


	2. steal from the makers who unmade us

That Friday afternoon, Astoria arrives at the first-floor classroom where Muggle Studies are held when the class is already in session. She does her best not to slow her steps when the only remaining seats are the ones next to Malfoy. She can still feel the after effects of the tonic Madam Pomfrey had forced her to drink while the Slytherin had had her eyes fixed on the large clock above the entrance of the hospital wing, busy envisioning what her fellow students will make up about her when she arrives late to class again.

She’s not eating enough, taking too many classes, letting herself endure too much stress says a shrill voice in her head that sounds suspiciously similar to the one of a certain healer, but as she feels multiple eyes varying between emotions of contempt and pity on her frail figure, she really could not care less. Astoria finds she’d rather be swallowed whole by all the Pansy Parkinsons the world has to offer than have to stomach the look of concern she receives from Splinter. Instead, she focuses on emptying the contents of her bag onto her desk while her vision is still somewhat blurry around the edges.

After a while, the class returns to its usual mind-numbing state and Astoria allows herself one singular deep breath, the exhale only marginally shakier than it ought to be.

Really, Pomfrey can suck an erumpent horn, she’s fine.

Or not, because now even Malfoy has focused in on her direction, not really looking at her, his grey eyes trained on some kind of middle distance, mouth a hard line. But Astoria has already had to endure enough humiliation for one day, so she tries her hardest to decipher the incoherent words coming out of her professor’s mouth, the faint ringing in her ears nearly commonplace by now.

When the bell rings, it is Astoria who is throwing her scroll, inkpot and feather inside of her bag and attempting to make a hasty retreat, but feels her body locking up instead when a hand brushes her elbow so briefly it might not have happened at all.

“Greengrass,” the white-haired, broody problem that Astoria really cannot deal with right now mutters, in a tone so reluctant and almost annoyed, the Slytherin girl physically feels all of her defences rising up.

“What?” she nearly snarls back, and the fact that she immediately feels guilty angers her even more, that a boy so insignificant to her can make her feel so inadequate.

Especially when the boy in question is so tactless, so the opposite of suave, even his brainless cronies had left him to rot as soon as his father’s favours with Voldemort had run out.

At her retort, it’s business as usual for Malfoy, all hard eyes and down-turned mouth, the gaunt features making him look even meaner. “Forget it,” he spits and pushes past her, effectively stealing Astoria’s plans for her own dramatic escape.

The edges of her vision white out again, from the tonic, she’s sure, as she counts to ten inwardly before she starts on her own exit, her stomach curling in on itself as she makes her way towards the Great Hall.

* * *

She never makes it to dinner. Instead, she comes to and promptly squeezes her eyes shut again at the last rays of sunlight emanating from the high windows of the hospital wing. Reluctantly, she assesses her surroundings, feels the feather-light grip of another hand around her own, follows the robed arm until she spots the blond waves of her sister in the chair to the left of her bed.

Daphne hasn’t yet noticed Astoria’s awakened state, so she takes advantage of the few moments to force away the headache that comes whenever she is about to cry, along with the routine annoyances of disappointment and shame. Clearing her throat of the mucus that has settled there as best as she can, she squeezes her older sister’s hand lightly and plasters on the most believable smile she can manage.

“How long was I out for this time? Anything record-breaking?” Daphne returns a smile that is entirely too wobbly for Astoria’s liking. Her own grows even wider in defiance.

“Only a few hours,” Daphne croaks, her glassy, puppy-like eyes causing the throbbing at her temples to reappear, “It’s just past curfew, actually. I’m basically incriminating myself for you.”

A single huff of laughter escapes Astoria’s lips and it’s almost genuine. So, she only missed dinner, that’s not so bad, she can always claim she-

“I missed cooking class,” she nearly yells, and all the residual dregs of shame she had swallowed down so expertly come rushing back. Astoria rips her hand out of her sister’s and jumps out of the creaky hospital bed. Her bag is lying to her right and she proceeds to pick it up; it’s still carrying her Potions and Muggle Studies scrolls and books, that’s good, she can still make it, she’s feeling much better now anyway. “I’ve got to go, maybe I can catch the end of it.”

“ _Astoria!_ ” Daphne is yelling now, too, and makes her way to the other Greengrass, who is already pulling at the heavy-set door that leads to the parts of the school she doesn’t detest. “It’s past curfew, it’s over already. Is it not voluntary anyway, what’s the matter with you?”

“ _Daphne_ ,” Astoria replies with just as much childish indignation and walks through the threshold, fingers absent-mindedly combing through her flattened hair, “I love you, but you don’t get it.”

And she really doesn’t. She marches down the hall without outright running, relieved that she can’t hear another set of feet behind her, mind focused on the shortest and most deserted way to the kitchens.

The painted pear tickled and content, Astoria steps through the frame as soon as it has swung open but stops in her tracks when a crash in front of her reaches her ears. Several crashes, in fact. Vaguely, she wonders whether the elves have gotten into a case of elderflower wine again, when her question is answered in the form of a string of curses.

“Blasted thing,” the voice mutters, evidently too concerned with whatever is happening further inside of the kitchen to notice a new presence, “This isn’t anything like bloody Potions.”

Astoria finally braves the last few steps until she is fully standing inside of the large room as quietly as she can, the sight that she is met with so far from anything she might have imagined that she doesn’t understand what she is seeing at first.

A waffle iron, a contraption they had discussed earlier in class, is set up on one of the tables, or so Astoria assumes, as it is currently so smothered in dough that there is barely any of it to see. Next to it, the same tome she had spied Malfoy reading at breakfast is open on its first few pages, similarly covered in several specks of sticky, white dough.

The rest of the dough is located somewhere around the vicinity of the table and the floor, which is where she spies him. He’s hunched over, glaring at the smoking end of an electrical outlet so intensely, Astoria is surprised his ears aren’t smoking as well.

She allows herself to step closer, the sounds her flats make against the marble echoing horribly loud throughout the room, to which he reacts by slamming his head against the underside of the table.

“You know, Malfoy,” Astoria says, careful not to acknowledge how he’s just made a fool of himself in front of her, or how he’s nonchalantly trying to check for blood as he’s getting up, “If the food’s so bad here you have to make your own, I’m sure you could have just said something.”

“It’s not me who didn’t even bother to show up for dinner tonight.” She feels momentarily touched that he’d noticed at all, before the more familiar irritation makes itself known. Astoria has already got enough people worrying about her an unnecessary amount, she doesn’t need his faux concern on top of that.

“Oh? But is it not you who’s turned moving their food around the plate into an artform?” she counters, because it’s not like Astoria to ever back down from a challenge.

“ _I’m_ not dying.”

And, wow, when she’d mused that Malfoy’s the opposite of suave? She must have missed the owl memo, because, boy, has he got a way with words. The way he says it, too, like it’s such common knowledge, like people just throw it into her face on a daily basis. Astoria doesn’t think she will ever be able to fully forgive her sister, when she had accidentally mentioned it in front of all of her horrid friends, when Astoria had been only in her second year and hadn’t yet figured out how to inconspicuously sneak in and out of the hospital wing.

Astoria lets it slide instead, because she’d already risen to the bait once today, and it’s not really a challenge when the competition is covered in rapidly drying waffle dough anyway. She watches a particular chunk on his neck droop down the inside of his button-up when he turns his back on her to assess the damage, and it’s only then that she notices how he’s thrown his robe to the next table over, the Slytherin tie loosened. It is the first time in a long time that she’s seen him look so, … informal.

Something inside of her warms at that.

She quickly squashes it down again.

Stepping closer still, she swipes a finger against the dough on top of the open tome that had interested her so only days before, and finally realises that it is a recipe book. A muggle recipe book. Different to the one issued for class, he must have been too embarrassed to buy it at Flourish and Blotts. Astoria wonders how he got his hands on this one.

“I broke it,” he says, his voice too harsh in the eerie quiet of the room and nods his head in the general direction of the pitiful remains of the waffle iron.

The Slytherin girl briefly regards its wiring that is still smoking, the dough that is now permanently attached to all areas of the gadget and finds herself agreeing with Malfoy’s assessment.

Still not backing down from a challenge, Astoria moves to one side of the room, where a curious collection of gadgets and machinery is thrown into a pile larger than herself, both muggle and magical. Here, she finds another dozen or so waffle irons, identical to the decimated one. Careful to pull one out, she notes how the pile does not shift in the slightest, and Astoria chastises herself for even considering there’s anything left at Hogwarts that’s not charmed.

Relatively intact waffle iron in hand, she crosses the distance to where Malfoy has now Vanished the previous one and plugs the new one in instead. Surprisingly, there’s still a bit of dough actually inside of the mixing bowl, so Astoria deems it not a complete disaster and grabs the similarly dough-covered ladle while she waits for the iron to heat up.

She can feel Malfoy’s assessing glare burning a hole into the back of her robes but is much more in favour of appearing to be wholly enamoured with the process of staring at the self-heating gadget. Given the Slytherin boy’s earlier outbursts, Astoria feels like he deserves the growing uncomfortable silence instead.

“How is it so easy for you?” he asks, that same reluctant tone he’d used in class earlier, like he doesn’t really want to be asking, angry the words dared escape his mouth. Annoyed to have to discover something other people are better at than him, maybe.

Astoria allows for an amused hum at his question, her brows furrowing and then unfurrowing in that way they are wont to do whenever she has to converse with another Slytherin but tries really hard not to let the words bother her.

“It’s not easy for me,” she admits and ponders how honest he really deserves for her to be with him while she closes the iron around her own attempt at a waffle, “The first time I used the Muggle train at thirteen, I was unaware that you have to pay for it, which I only realised after I’d been thrown out at the next station. I then proceeded to bawl my eyes out and realised I’d driven two hours in the wrong direction with no clue as to how to get home.”

“But your best friend is muggle-born,” he says, like it changes anything. Distantly, Astoria is mainly grateful he hasn’t used another word to describe Raghu.

“Sure, he’s also my only friend. Except for my sister, I suppose.” She dares a glance at him, but he’s not looking at her, frowning at some spot on the table, his arms crossed over his chest. Well, it’s not like he has anything to brag home about in the friend department lately, either. “Just because I’m a muggle-lover to the rest of our house doesn’t make me any less of a Slytherin to the other ones.”

Astoria can tell he’s not used to this blatant display of honesty, and truthfully, neither is she. To admit that she’s a bit of an outsider to both sides is something of a revelation she’d rather stuff deep into the back of her mind. But to claim that it’s easy for her, inexplicably, she needs him to know that it couldn’t be further from the truth. Rather than continuing that mind-boggling thought, Astoria sets to extracting her first and, if she may say so herself, rather successful-looking waffle from the hot iron, only slightly blackened at the edges.

Placing the waffle on the plate that’s long been abandoned to the side, she realises that she’s smiling, the first real one in a while.

“We did it!” she exclaims, not even bothering to hide how excited the singular blob of slightly charred waffle makes her feel. “Come on, let’s dig in.”

Grabbing two forks from a large tray of cutlery, she hands one to Malfoy and tears off her first piece. In her periphery vision, Astoria can tell how a smile is fighting at the corners of his lips and forced down again and for once, she lets herself feel giddy over this small victory. Somehow, the delicious taste of the waffle against her tongue pales in comparison.

“You did it,” Malfoy replies, and the younger Slytherin doesn’t miss how foreign the display of humility sounds coming from him as she watches him takes his own bite.

“No, you made the dough. Don’t weasel yourself out of this one,” she counters, feeling marginally more mature for not saying ferret instead.

It’s quiet, then, but not uncomfortably so. The waffle seems to be gone in a matter of seconds, but for whatever reason, both are reluctant to call it a night just yet.

“Hey, Greengrass?” Malfoy says, and Astoria meets his gaze in askance, “How did you get home? That time you took the Muggle train?”

She chuckles, busies herself with cleaning up the mess she’s made, a secret smile concealed by her brown locks of hair, “I’ll tell you when you manage to make a waffle without breaking anything.”

At breakfast the next morning, Astoria joins Raghu at the Ravenclaw table again, who offers her smiles and conversation like she hadn’t avoided him the entire week. She feels properly terrible for letting her housemates get to her once again but accepts his kindness with gratitude anyway.

She has to smother a yawn in the middle of speaking and cannot stop herself from searching for Malfoy’s lone figure at her house’s table, tries to find traces of his own exhaustion, evidence that last night had truly occurred.

When their eyes meet, she swallows down all traces of insecurity and forces a small smile onto her face, hopes it might remind him that he hadn’t imagined last night, either. He doesn’t return the smile, but he doesn’t exactly not return it either.

* * *

From then on, through unspoken agreement as Astoria likes to call it, their nightly cooking sessions become a familiar routine to her. She no longer misses any of the regular sessions with the rest of the Muggle Studies class, but now she lingers in the kitchens, pretending to clean up after herself or writing down something onto her scroll in a last minute thought, and waits for Malfoy to step through the portrait, shows him what they’ve covered earlier with Professor Splinter.

Because of the food they cook or the pastries they bake, something that has almost become an afterthought to her, she feels less fatigued than she has in some time, and she likes to think he’s gaining some colour back, too.

Thankfully, the others remain clueless, which Astoria gathers because Pansy Parkinson hasn’t turned it into her new running gag yet, but it’s getting harder and harder to sneak back into the common room without rising suspicion. Especially because her older sister is being extra clingy ever since she’s gone and fainted in the middle of the day, and the fact that Astoria hasn’t returned to the Slytherin table during mealtimes doesn’t seem to help, either.

Her and Malfoy have kind of gotten into a routine about this. She leaves before he does, usually before curfew now, and Pomfrey’s always been an easy excuse. She feels slightly guilty for using her malediction to cover for her meetings with Malfoy, especially because she’s not exactly sure why they are happening anyway but being told she’s not going to live past forty has got to be good for something, she supposes.

As the school term goes on and September drags into October drags into November drags into December, Astoria comes to discover that Draco Malfoy makes for an interesting conversation partner. She hasn’t yet determined how she feels about this.

“Where are the house elves, by the way?” she asks, mostly to break the silence that has formed around the intense concentration both Slytherins are paying to the contact grill doing its muggle magic around a pair of paninis. Self-heating gadgets that mysteriously heat up whatever’s inside has seemed to work for them before. They’re sticking to familiar territory, here.

“They know not to show up when I’m here.”

“Okay, ominous.”

“Why do you care so much about this class?” he asks her on a different Wednesday, hands in a fierce battle with the pumpkin he’s trying to turn into soup with a hand blender.

“Why do you?”

“I asked first.”

“I don’t know. I want them to know I care, I guess.”

She doesn’t remark that he never states his reason.

“Where did you get the recipe book from?” It’s the second week of November, and the day she’s had to admit defeat and pull out all of her winter wear, currently sporting the one traitorous cobalt blue cashmere jumper among a sea of green.

“Confiscated it from some muggle-born when I was with the Inquisitorial Squad.”

“Ah.” 

“Pansy told me you tried to rile her up at the start of term,” Malfoy says, whisking a batch of royal icing until the stiff peaks come to the surface, or something close to it. Astoria’s already chucked her attempt into the bin, so she doesn’t exactly feel qualified to judge.

Astoria laughs softly, moves to the tray of cooling biscuits instead, their snowman-shaped edges clean and sharp, just like Professor Splinter had shown the class earlier.

“I did no such thing. It is not my fault she is a walking Witch Weekly exclusive. How very unbecoming of her, indeed.”

Malfoy does not join in on the laughter, however his pursed lips tell another story, the skin crinkling around his eyes. He shakes his head, a few white strands of hair falling out of their meticulous place and into his eyes, causing him to rake a hand through his hair after he’s transferred the icing into a piping bag. Astoria tries not to stare.

“Then I hope the exclusive does not fail to mention that nothing happened that night. Between Pansy and I,” he replies, his voice growing fainter as he goes on.

Astoria turns her head to where he is now trimming the piping bag’s tip. He’s properly smiling now, a small, almost shy one, as if he hasn’t done it in a while and is merely trying it on for size. He looks good, she notices, better, the circles under his eyes almost gone now, the grey tinge of his skin only noticeable if one cares to look for it. Astoria bites her lip absently, a question on her tongue she isn’t sure she should voice.

“Do you think Parkinson would join our little study group if you asked her?” Astoria says, carefully slow, choosing to ignore the implication of what Malfoy’s just said for the moment. She forces herself to avert her gaze in order not to look for his reaction too plainly.

To Astoria, the sessions embody a kind of freedom she previously had not known is available to her, a way to show she does not need to have everything handed to her. It’s also just that, cooking, even if Astoria would still hesitate before telling her family about this particular past-time activity of hers.

To people such as Pansy Parkinson, mixing her own cookie dough, with muggle appliances, at that, is equal to asking for a muggle’s hand in marriage.

To Draco Malfoy, Astoria is still trying to figure out exactly what it means.

The smile that had played on his lips only seconds before has vanished, the line between his brows returning to its familiar place as he pauses in coating the biscuits with the contents of the bag.

“She doesn’t take Muggle Studies. You also promised you would not tell anyone, Greengrass,” he says, his voice lower now, walls up as he regards her, visibly sizing her up.

“And I won’t, if you don’t want me to,” Astoria answers, her fingers stilling as well. She turns her body in his direction, closer to the boy than she thought she was and crosses her arms, feeling oddly exposed now. “Only, I have to ask. Is this why you don’t want people to know? Are you scared the Pansy Parkinsons of this world will know you are debasing yourself in the kitchens, playing at house elf?” 

She watches Malfoy grit his teeth, prominent jaw jutting out even more so, his lips curling in the way she’s seen so many times during her earlier years at Hogwarts, his mean expression trained on a wide-eyed first-year or the saviour of the wizarding world, flanked by friends twice the size of him. Astoria has always thought the look makes his otherwise striking features appear rather uncomely, but now that it’s directed at her, she can barely stand to look at him.

“Yes, that is exactly what I’m scared of,” he spits, the sarcastic undertone of his words not unnoticed by Astoria, “Have you forgotten who I am? What I am?”

At this, Astoria can’t help but let her stare travel towards the light material that is forever covering the mottled skin of Malfoy’s left forearm, now subconsciously cradled by his right palm. “You seem to have a rather utopian idea of what people would think if they knew I was now trying to behave like a muggle, months after _I tortured_ _them_.”

This is the first instance Astoria has ever heard him mention the war.

She’s read the quotations the Daily Prophet had included of his testimony during the weeks after the Battle of Hogwarts, a time during which the newspaper had had only little space for articles in between the notices of bodies that had been recovered that had yet to be identified, or the countless obituaries of mourning friends and parents, losses the paper had not been allowed to publish during You-Know-Who’s takeover of the Ministry.

The torture Malfoy is referring to had also been cited, as well as the reluctant addition of Harry Potter’s testimony, in which he’d claimed to know Malfoy’s hand had been forced, a fact the Wizengamot had not been able to doubt, nor anything else that had come out of the Chosen One’s mouth. All else that Astoria can remember reading of Malfoy’s cited words had seemed to have been the worst of his admissions.

She briefly wonders what it means that Malfoy chooses to omit the proven coercion, whether he thinks he won’t be believed anyway.

Astoria has an inkling that he might be justified in thinking so.

“I think,” she begins, considering what she is going to say next carefully, aware that Malfoy looks just about ready to jump out of his own skin, “that it would still be better than doing nothing, making people think you don’t care at all. Do you want people to think nothing has changed?”

“I don’t care what people think,” he replies much too quickly, and Astoria does not believe it for a second. He appears to recognise this when he catches her doubtful expression and snorts. “It doesn’t feel right. I still think things. I can’t just turn it off. And I can’t be the person you apparently want me to be.”

“Well, thankfully you already are someone. My arrogant, stubborn, attractive, dramatic friend whose icing is about to look like a particularly potent serving of Bubotuber pus if it’s not taken care of soon,” she says and thinks, yes, he is her friend. She doesn’t know when that happened.

At her words, Malfoy swivels towards the table where the previously snow-white icing is now a faint greenish colour, how did that even happen, frantically trying to save the remaining few biscuits still on the tray, his eyes wide and his cheeks slightly pinker.

“This is ridiculous. Right, no more tête-à-têtes in the kitchens, Greengrass.”

* * *

The holidays are Astoria’s favourite time of the year.

This year they are a rotten load of tosh.

Daphne is going home over the holidays and the last few days before the Hogwarts Express is leaving, she’s nothing but a whirlwind of shiny hair and pressed robes, constantly in an out of Hogsmeade to buy just one more present. She’s taken to talking at Astoria a mile an hour; really, is she sure, won’t Christmas be so much better with the family, what are you going to do, all alone up here, trade gobstones with Poppy?

Astoria is observing her sitting on her suitcase, still prattling on while she forces the zip shut, mostly relieved that whatever’s come between the two sisters has stubbornly been forgotten about over the course of term and absently stroking Prince, her black bombay cat, behind his ears before he leaps off Daphne’s bed.

They hug goodbye, her once again reassuring Daphne that she will be fine, she won’t neglect doing her regular check-ups again, yes, she’s given Astoria her present for Christmas Day, she is _going_ to miss that train.

And that should have been the rotten part of the day. But it’s not.

Because it’s a Friday, Astoria is currently lifting the tray that’s carrying the shell of a yule log out of the toaster oven while Malfoy’s busy whisking the filling, and she briefly has to stop to wonder when they had become so good at this. She’s not one to brag, but when Malfoy’s spooning the filling onto the shell and she’s rolling up the log it doesn’t even tear once.

Classes are no longer in session and Muggle Studies is technically off for another week, but they’re on a roll here, get it, and if she doesn’t want to miss the few hours she’s got with Malfoy twice a week, she’s at least mature enough to recognise that, for Merlin’s sake. At least he seems to agree with the sentiment. She feels weirdly excited about that last thought.

“You’ve, uh,” he says, and she’s been smiling at her slice of cake like a right dolt, so she only notices his slightly confounded expression once he’s already pink all over, pointing in the vague direction of her cheek, “you’ve got a bit of cake right … there.”

And it’s so cliché, so straight out of one of Uncle Orville’s muggle tales, but Astoria’s traitorous heart skips a beat like it doesn’t care how unoriginal it’s being regardless.

“What are you going to do about it, Prince Charming?” she dares in turn, her smile turning slightly crooked, and she forces herself not to flutter her lashes at him. She’s still got some standards.

“Huh?”

“Never mind,” she rushes out, feeling silly now, and wipes at her own face haphazardly, turning back to the stove so rapidly the whole world spins for a second.

Astoria can tell he’s still staring at her, which doesn’t help her beet-red complexion in any way, but when he turns back to his plate, it doesn’t feel like she’s ruined the moment completely, so there’s that. They each have another slice of the yule log in amicable silence, and Astoria can’t seem to have a single sensible conversation starter form in her head, but that’s okay for the moment, she thinks.

For the first time, the two Slytherins brave their way back to the dungeons together. Having never before spent Christmas at Hogwarts, she is still in the process of trying not to be creeped out by the school when it is almost deserted, the familiar buzz of students that is now missing strangely unsettling. Slytherin is a special case, even outside of the holidays, the common room or its table in the Great Hall eerily vacant since the summer. This year, not a single first year has been sorted into Slytherin, the custom of many families that have been Slytherin alumni for decades come to an end. Despite herself, Astoria hates it.

But because of these circumstances, the two find themselves in front of the concealed passageway leading to the common room without their usual flair for anonymity, Astoria reciting the password, _half-blood prince_ , and don’t even bother to listen for some form of commotion before Malfoy’s barging into the room. The second he’s inside, he stops so abruptly Astoria walks right into him.

She can tell something’s wrong by the way she can feel his every muscle tense beneath the robes on the back that she’s placed a hand against so as not to crash into him further. The seconds it takes her to extract herself and glance past Malfoy’s shoulder, she feels exactly like the first time she’d had to face a boggart, wand arm trembling violently as she’d waited for it to shift into her greatest fear.

What she sees is Pansy, standing right at the entrance of the common room with a barrage of suitcases floating behind her. As soon as she spies Astoria behind Malfoy’s narrow form, shock is plainly written on her face for the smallest fraction of a moment until she’s controlled her features again, eyes narrowed triumphantly and cheshire grin so wide all her perfect white teeth are visible.

“What are you still doing here?” Malfoy asks, his voice strained.

“So, it’s true,” Pansy says instead, the soft, lulling tone clashing with the vicious expression while she lets her trunks touch the ground, “I didn’t want to believe Millicent when she claimed she’d seen you two exiting the kitchens, of course, but I suppose even I can’t deny the truth any longer.” She moves into Malfoy’s space, gazes up at him with what would be an innocent expression on anyone else’s face.

“It’s my sentence, you know that.”

“I suppose it makes sense,” Pansy goes on, eyes set on the spot on Malfoy’s tie where Astoria knows he’d gotten some filling on earlier, messily scrubbed off, “I wondered how you’re almost looking like yourself again when you’re still barely eating. What’s next, Draco? Why stop at the blood traitor girlfriend when you can make it official and shag a mudblood instead?”

“There’s nothing to make official. She doesn’t mean anything to me,” Malfoy says so instantaneously it’s like he’s practiced it before and she doesn’t know what exactly renders her speechless then, whether it is the manner in which Malfoy blatantly lets the cruel words slide or whether it is the shock that she _hadn’t_ seen this coming a mile off.

And then, she doesn’t want to hear whatever mean thing it is Pansy has likely already queued up, doesn’t want to see Malfoy sneer at his ex-girlfriend like Astoria’s just that insignificant, so she tucks her pathetic tail in and walks towards the girls’ dormitory as calmly as she can manage with the headache that is steadily creeping up on her, threatening to split her skull in two.

The final highlight of the day is when she finds the present she’d meant to give to Daphne lying waiting on her bed.

* * *

The rest of the holidays drag on in much the same way, the actual holidays being extra dull. The staff is doing their best to hide it, but the known absences still weigh heavy on most, the first Christmas without many of the loved ones of Hogwarts’ occupants.

Astoria knows it’s a horrid thought, but she feels almost guilty that she hasn’t lost anyone she cares about to the war, the worst of her current troubles being the fact that Malfoy and Pansy have taken to sitting next to each other again, back to square one.

She knows he’s watching her every now and then, whenever he thinks she won’t notice, or Pansy, for that matter. In Astoria’s case, she’d rather pretend the last few months haven’t happened at all, ashamed that she’d bought his act. She imagines him and Pansy talking about her, laughing about how naïve she’d been, how utterly deplorable. Realistically, she knows what he’d said could not have been the complete truth, knows that he wouldn’t have said many of the things he’d shared with her if he cared so little, but then again, Malfoy does not deserve her being realistic right now.

Looking back, she’d rather have accompanied her parents to the celebrations of some Ministry official that’ll make them look good instead. She’s lucky she’d kept the receipt of the new recipe book she’d meant as a present.

The day the Hogwarts Express arrives back in Hogsmeade, Astoria’s back at her usual spot at the Ravenclaw table, letting Raghu fill her in on his holidays, and vows to herself to never put her trust in lost causes again.


	3. leave them nothing to devour

The new year’s celebrations for the students who had spent actual New Year’s Eve at home come and go with a literal bang, thousands of individual sparks coming together to form a spectacular show. The finale is a unison of the four house mascots, the vivid colours turning the entire area almost ethereal, a stark contrast to the students of Hogwarts underneath it, neatly lined up by colour. If Astoria were the kind of witch to make resolutions for the new year, this would be the ideal point in time to promise to herself to stop wallowing in misery in the company of people even more miserable than she is. And perhaps to stop falling asleep to Professor Binn’s droning voice.

Frankly, it’s quite easy to at least believe in the possibility of the former in her current state, hand clasping her best friend’s arm right at the line where the Slytherins are separated from the Ravenclaws, stars in her eyes as she’s got her head lifted to the sky, a foreign lightness to her chest from the champagne Raghu had nicked from the teacher’s table. Malfoy hasn’t even bothered to show up, Pansy’s framed by Daphne and Tracey, and Astoria feels slightly vindictive over the fact that it does not make her feel anything.

Raghu kisses her cheek when the bells start their tune and the first sparks forming the number 1999 have lit the cluster of students from far up above, and she feels happy, giggling as she returns the favour. No, really, she does.

Her mood doesn’t even dampen when she arrives back at the common room to discard her thick winter robes and instead finds Malfoy moping on one of the leather couches, alone, hand marking his place in the book set on his lap as he looks up. Astoria doesn’t acknowledge him, and when she emerges out of her room again, Malfoy is standing in the middle of the room, book discarded on the sofa, hands limp at his sides.

Startled, she falters for a second and accidentally makes eye contact with him, dismayed to find that he’s looking impeccable again, the Slytherin prince everyone knows and despises. The way his light hair is perfectly gelled back in that casual way that must take hours and his dark robes are fitting to him like he hadn’t meant to spend his day sulking, Astoria cannot find a trace of the boy she’d found she liked so much.

“Happy new year, Malfoy,” she says after she has control over her limbs again and marches towards the entrance door, not giving him the chance to reply.

Tit for tat, she thinks.

* * *

Once classes resume, she can almost pretend that the past few months weren’t real, just as silly as the doodles she is still sketching in between her class notes. When she stops to think about it, which she doesn’t, they weren’t, interactions always confined to late nights in the kitchens while Malfoy stoically refused to acknowledge her presence in any other situation. Looking back, that should have been the first sign that she was wasting her energy.

Either way, she isn’t forced to actively acknowledge it until the first Muggle Studies session in the kitchens, where it takes her approximately ten minutes of the course to realise that Malfoy’s there, too.

He is as far removed from the rest of the class as the outlet his flambé burner is attached to will allow him to, as much his decision as that of the rest of the class, she’s sure. Tonight, they’re trying to make crème brûlée, and it’s such a spectacularly bad idea, Astoria isn’t surprised about the number of students that have to be rushed to the hospital wing until it’s in the double digits.

Due to her own fantastic teachings, she likes to think, neither her nor Malfoy are one of the unlucky ones, but she’s so busy being offended about him impeding on her time in the kitchens, she can’t even gloat properly, seriously considers burning a finger or two to get out of this situation.

But no, that should be him. This is _her_ time.

“All part of the learning process, I’m certain,” Professor Splinter shrieks hysterically while conjuring another stretcher for a Freddie Abbott, and swivels around to take stock of the remaining handful of students, “I’m afraid we’ll have to postpone. Ms. Greengrass, dear, you have been such a sweetheart these past few months, if you could be so good and tidy up while I accompany Mr. Abbott here.”

“Well, actually—,” she starts, but saves her breath when Splinter is already halfway through the portrait, the stretcher from which distant groans can be heard floating behind her. Huffing a resigned breath, Astoria extracts her ebony wand from the sleeve of her robe and sends the variety of burners back to their designated space while her classmates follow their professor outside of the kitchens, all too content with letting her clean up the mess.

At the sound of dishes clattering against each other, Astoria finds Malfoy floating the plates that had been laid out on the tables to the sinks, which promptly start lathering them in soap. When he turns back to catch her watching him, he looks so uncharacteristically sheepish she momentarily forgets to be mad at him. Astoria is so horrified by this that she sets to returning the last few burners by hand before the corners of her mouth can betray her irrevocably. She’s also not mad, she’s indifferent. Completely neutral. Yes, that.

“I told Pansy that she can’t talk to you like that anymore,” he says to her back in a low voice. He doesn’t go on after that, like he’s waiting for her to thank him or something equally preposterous.

“That’s great, now she’ll only do it when you’re not present,” Astoria hums, and busies herself by stuffing her scroll and quill back into her bag. Beside her, she can see Malfoy throwing his arms into the air out of frustration, closer than she’s entirely comfortable with at present.

“Astoria,” he nearly whines. It’s the first time he’s used her given name. The girl in question had had other scenarios in mind. “I’m sorry, alright? I’m sorry I didn’t tell her earlier. You know I didn’t want people to know.”

“Oh, is it so embarrassing to be associated with me? Thanks, I had no clue.”

“That is not what this is about. I don’t know what you want me to do.”

“You’re two different people, and I can’t stand one of them.” She’s channelling all of her willpower to not raise her voice, so at a loss with how utterly he is missing the point, she wonders if he is purposely misunderstanding or if he really is that dense.

“I don’t understand you. You know who I am, we’ve talked about this.”

“Yes, Malfoy, I know exactly who you are,” she says, and she’s not— she’s not yelling. But he’s so close now she can feel his shorts breaths on her face, eyes narrowed and burning into her own. “After all, wasn’t it you who thought it so important to remind me how many muggles he’s tortured during the war?”

It’s astonishingly low, she knows it is, but he’s making her feel just like he had on Christmas again, and she feels it is utterly undeserved.

“Yeah? And where were you during the war? Must be nice, to have a family that refused to pick sides until after it mattered,” he snarls back, teeth gritted and head leaning to the side like he’s sizing her up. “It’s funny, the way the other Slytherins treat me now. When during the war, I saw none of them complaining about their preferential treatment here; not Pansy, not Theo, not _Daphne_ , not fucking Zabini who’s happy pretending it never happened wherever he is now. It must be so easy to forget about what they’ve willingly done here, unlike me, who’s got his allegiance permanently carved into his _skin_.”

He’s panting now, speaking so rapidly Astoria isn’t sure that he actually means to say any of it, left forearm jutted out like he’s offering it to her, forcing her to look at it, covered by the flimsy material of his shirt.

“This isn’t fair—"

“Don’t you want to see it?” he says, and he looks hysterical, frightened even, eyes rooted to a spot somewhere to the left of her eyes. Before she can fully comprehend what he is saying, Malfoy has already started to pull at his sleeve, rolling it up in jerky movements. In an instant, Astoria feels just as hysterical as he is looking, and tries to command her shaky fingers to stop what his are doing. He exhales a shaky laugh. “Everyone does. They recognise me, they start looking for it.”

Astoria can already see the faded grey in the soft lighting of the kitchen, and before she knows it, she’s got her hand on his, the heel of her palm on the serpent’s head snarling at her. Malfoy’s breathing so hard she can’t hear anything beyond it, and finally, _finally_ , his hand stills midmotion.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she thinks that she should be okay with it, that she should let him show her and accept it for what it is. She’d known that it’s right there when she had first sat next to him in class, the hours they’d spent alone in this room, she’d known, when he’d told her that there’s nothing between him and Pansy and when she’d called him Prince Charming, she’d known. But seeing the tattoo peeking out from beneath her own hand, it’s different, somehow.

It reminds her too much of the Carrows, throwing a first year in front of her to torture in the Great Hall after hearing about her muggle-born best friend. When she’d refused, they’d just had someone else do it instead.

It had been Vincent Crabbe. Astoria isn’t cruel enough to tell him that.

After entirely too much time has passed, Astoria dares to look up again. Malfoy has got his eyes fixed on her hand, and now he just looks impossibly sad, all the fight pushed out of him. The open emotion on his face throws her off balance, so uncommon on the face of a Slytherin and even more so on his, and she can’t possibly find a way to lighten the mood, realises she hasn’t made a sound for a while now.

“I was so proud when I was told. I didn’t actually understand that it wasn’t a choice until someone tried to tell me not to make the wrong one.” He’s speaking slowly, quietly, like it’s the first time he’s dared to say it out loud and unsure how the words will be able to adequately fit around what he’s trying to say. She doesn’t fully understand what it means, but doesn’t dare interrupt him, still watching his face, until his eyes come to meet hers. “It will always be there. It’s part of who I am.”

She forces herself to maintain the eye contact and squeezes the hand that is still frozen underneath hers before letting go. Eventually, he pulls his sleeve down again, and Astoria takes her first real breath when the tattoo is fully covered.

“Maybe it can be a reminder not to ever let others lead your life for you again,” she starts, and is aware of the impossibly thin ice she is treading on by the way she sees his eyes start to slant again. She allows for another deep breath, squashing down all instincts not to continue, before she says, “at least yours no longer holds any power over you.”

And then, she swiftly pulls her dark locks up over her head, one hand gathering the mass at the top, and abruptly turns around after catching the bewildered look on Malfoy’s face. Astoria knows the precise moment he spots it when she can hear a sharp intake of breath from behind her, hears him step closer to get a better look. She should speak up, explain, she should, but her headache is back in full force, like her body is actively trying to prevent her from elaborating. She scrunches her eyes shut and tries to match her own to the relatively even breathing behind her.

“What…” Malfoy begins.

She doesn’t know if she imagines the phantom of his touch at the nape of her neck, as if he wants to touch it, but can’t bring himself to do it. Astoria realises belatedly that she is shaking when the tremors cause his fingers to bump against her skin.

“You asked me how I got home. That day I took the Muggle train. It’s a play on the Trace, but instead of underage magic, my family knows where to find me when I’m in extraordinary distress.”

The accidental touch seems to have emboldened him, because now he’s running a finger over it, the tiny, iridescent pearl that is lodged into her skin, making all the hairs there stand up. She had even gotten to choose it, the manifestation of the condition under which she wouldn’t need to be home schooled. Astoria had picked the pearl in kinship to Ariel’s nautilus shell, but instead of trapping her voice, it’s her freedom she’d semi-voluntarily given up.

“They have you tracked,” the boy behind her breathes, and she can hear the wonder in his voice, which turns a shade more bitter at his next words, “You must hate it.”

Suddenly all of her efforts over the entire duration of the term are for naught, because there are tears blurring her vision, threatening to spill over. She shakes her head, frees her hair from the grip at the top of her head, uses the motion to discreetly wipe at her face.

“I don’t… hate it. I don’t blame them. I just hate the circumstances,” she says and turns around once she’s sure her eyes won’t allow for any more treacherous tears to leak.

It just isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that she is being coddled like a baby and it isn’t fair that she _thinks_ it isn’t fair, because, when it comes down to it, she is in fact eternally grateful for it.

She just loathes that it is necessary, is all.

Whenever Astoria has a bit of a fit of self-pity, her mind wanders back to the many visits at St. Mungo’s. Of the patients she’s gotten to know, the ones she sees frequently etched into her mind, their condition often much further than hers, their situation more dire, and still it’s Astoria who is being worried over in her private room, with her private healer, and that isn’t fair either. The ones she never sees again frequent her thoughts even more, unable to keep from wondering whether she should be celebrating their recovery or mourning their loss.

Malfoy looks sceptical at her words, eyes cast to his own forearm again, and is about to speak when the portrait swings open once more. Astoria doesn’t realise how close they are standing until Professor Splinter is already halfway inside of the room, and takes several steps back before blindly grabbing for her bag on the table next to her.

“There you are, such a darling, oh, and Mr. Malfoy, … splendid,” Splinter says by way of greeting, taking a quick survey of the room and appearing satisfied and not overly aware of their previous proximity, “Do go to bed now, it’s getting quite late, and do inform Ms. Brownlowe that her sister is staying with Madam Pomfrey while her skin regrows, if you may.”

The two Slytherins rush out of the kitchens into the hallway, something they have only ever done together once before. Before she has to start wondering whether Malfoy’s going to make them sneak back separately again, she rushes onwards before he’s fully out of the portrait, leaving him behind.

“Oh, and Malfoy,” she says over her shoulder, “don’t think I don’t still expect waffles for telling you how I got home that day.”

* * *

Things aren’t truly back to normal, and on Friday, Malfoy’s at the class session in the kitchens again, where Astoria makes sure to be one of the first to leave once everyone starts to filter out. On Monday, she is still eating dinner next to Raghu, but when she catches Malfoy looking over at her, at least it doesn’t ruin her appetite any longer. He’s sitting on his own again, but not necessarily because he’s not sitting next to Pansy, who is in fact not at dinner at all. Neither is her sister. She mulls over possible reasons for this, hopes it doesn’t involve any Hufflepuffs several heads shorter than them.

“So, what’s up with that, anyway?”

Astoria is thrown out of her reverie so harshly it takes her all too long to realise Raghu is talking to her. She turns her gaze to him and to her horror, sees that he’s got his fixed in the direction of where Malfoy is sitting.

“What’s up with what?” she says, lamely, and shovels a piece of shepherd’s pie into her mouth.

In the corner of her eye, she notes Raghu turning his head in her direction, looking for weak points, maybe, before he shamelessly stares at Malfoy again, head propped up against one hand.

“Are you guys involved or something?” Raghu asks, and she must hate shepherd’s pie, otherwise she can’t explain why she’s coughing it back up.

But before she has the chance to be outraged in the name of her own virtue, someone else is plopping down to the left of her, patting Astoria on the back while she’s desperately trying not to make too much of a scene, and are all Ravenclaws this rudely forward?

When she turns to thank her unwanted saviour, she doesn’t even register her own sister for a moment, entirely alien sitting at the Ravenclaw table. She’s looking as immaculate as always, but there’s something frantic about her, and Astoria rationalises that she must not even realise that she’s sat down at the wrong table.

“What’s the matter?” Daphne asks, looking anywhere but at her sister, and Astoria notices how her eyes keep straying to the entrance doors.

“Astoria and Draco Malfoy,” Raghu replies, as if this is not the first conversation her best friend has ever had with her sister. Astoria swivels her head in his direction again, feeling oddly out of place even though these are her two worlds that are colliding here, and glares at him for the betrayal.

“Oh. Huh,” Daphne replies, and now the younger Slytherin knows something is wrong, because this is _not_ the appropriate reaction.

Astoria focuses on her again, takes in her widened eyes, her lips that are pressed together, the way her hand is pulling on the fingers of the other one in her lap. The only times she’s ever seen her sister this distraught is whenever Astoria dares to delve too deep into one of the topics the sisters do not delve into. 

“Daphne?”

Her sister is now darting her eyes back and forth between the doors and her younger sister, before she finally huffs out of frustration.

“I just came from detention.”

“What? Why?” Astoria hisses, eloquently.

“I,” she starts and bites her lip, finally looking at Astoria for more than the fraction of a second, “I pushed Pansy. And am I the only one that didn’t know McGonagall is an Animagus? She caught me pushing Pansy. Into the lake.”

Behind her, she can hear Raghu guffawing, who apparently does not understand that the world as Astoria knows it has just come crashing down upon her.

“Yes, you are, how can you not know?” she can hear Raghu asking in a completely inadequate response to what must be Daphne’s first nervous breakdown. If not, it's Astoria's.

“Well, I’m sorry,” Daphne counters, twisting around her sister so she can train her glare on the Ravenclaw, “I must have been too distracted by that cute werewolf we had for a professor.”

“Wait, what?” Raghu mutters. Astoria’s had just about enough of this nonsense.

“What are you two on about? Why are you pushing Pansy in lakes?” Astoria interrupts, and shoves a hand in front of her best friend’s face in a universal command for silence, before turning to face her sister fully.

“It was one lake. And she was behaving like a right bint.”

Daphne in turn is behaving suspiciously nonchalant about what is akin to her own personal apocalypse, being downright cagey about it, and Astoria can feel her shoulders droop.

It’s about her, then.

“What did she say?” she asks her older sister quietly, and Raghu must notice the shift, because Astoria can feel him turning around and joining a conversation with his housemates, giving them space.

Daphne shakes her head, keeps shaking it, her full lips morphed into a thin line, knuckles turning white where they are gripping the edge of the bench. Then, in a rapid motion, her head whirls to where Astoria is sitting next to her, sweeps her wide eyes across her face, searching for something.

“When did we become strangers to each other, Tori?” she nearly whispers.

“We’re not,” Astoria laughs weakly, a cold sensation spreading within her, “We’re family.”

The older Greengrass appears to be impossibly unsatisfied with this answer, eyes still fixed on her sister, and Astoria can’t look at her anymore, sweeps her eyes over the rest of the table, ensures that no one is listening too closely.

“Is that all? I thought you were my best friend. You don’t talk to me about anything that matters anymore, refuse to even sit next to me at mealtimes, and now I have to have Pansy of all people tell me that the reason I don’t ever get to spend time with you is because you’re spending all of it with Draco?”

“I’m not spending _all_ of my time with him,” Astoria mutters defensively in favour of addressing the other things she is being accused of.

“Tori, I love you, and I know the things Pansy said cannot possibly be the truth, but you know how this must look.”

And finally, Astoria cannot take her sister’s sad, patronizing expression anymore, and properly loses it. “At least _he’s_ trying to make a change. At least _I’m_ not pretending that half of Slytherin is out of the country because of the dreadful weather. And I don’t care how it looks, because anything is better than being stuck in time, pretending like any of it still matters, which is how _you’re_ looking from where _I’m_ sitting.”

She shoots up, ignores her useless, wobbly legs hitting against the table in her haste, shrugs off Raghu’s arm that comes out of nowhere, and makes her way out of the hall in great strides. Let them all look, let them make up their stories about pitiful, fragile Astoria Greengrass being an embarrassment for all noble wizarding families again, she can’t be bothered anymore.

On a roll now, seeing how this has now been her second emotional outburst in a week, she thinks, what’s one more, and marches down to the dungeons, heads to the girls’ dormitory, ignores the way her surroundings are starting to blur around her in the familiar way.

Throwing the door to the dorm she’s targeting open, she stomps in but ultimately falters, because there she is, exactly where Astoria had expected her, already showered and dressed, lounging on her bed, neat and orderly like she hasn’t just shared the same habitat as a whole lot of creepy mercreatures, but in a state completely unfit for what the younger girl is planning to yell at her.

“This is now the second time I’ve witnessed you bawling in one term,” Astoria ventures, the rug she had previously been standing on pulled from under her feet, feeling oddly dizzy like it’s not just a Muggle metaphor, “Careful, Parkinson, or people might start to think you have a heart.”

Pansy snorts at this, _snorts_ , the sound much too crass out of her tiny button nose. Astoria isn’t sure whether it’s her who’s losing her mind or everyone else around her. She has her hands tugging at the ends of her sleek hair, searching for split ends that don’t exist, and looks Astoria up and down with a dead stare.

“I can’t imagine what you could possibly want, little Greengrass. After all, you’ve already won,” she purrs, and rests her eyes on Astoria’s with an unamused smirk tugging at her lips, not even bothering to wipe away the mascara-blackened tears ruining her makeup.

She stays at the threshold, holding onto the opened door, thinks that this must be what it’s like to be trapped in a viper’s nest. She doesn’t miss the irony, standing there in greens and blacks herself. “You can’t possibly be serious. You did this to yourself.”

“But I am curious, did you and Draco at least have a good laugh about it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t play innocent with me, Greengrass, I see right through your little act. In fact, did you plan this with him? Had him lie about you, make me think we’re getting back together only to have him tell me that he likes someone else?”

Astoria is glad for her grip on the door when her vision takes a spin, and she can’t comprehend what Pansy is saying, so at odds with everything she’s experienced. The tiny increment of pity she feels for the other Slytherin in this moment abhors her, but she can’t help it. It is the exact same train of thought she has had about Draco and Pansy, the feeling that they played her for their own wretched amusement, some twisted form of foreplay.

“If that’s what makes you feel better, sure,” Astoria starts, finally finding her voice again. She takes a step in the direction of where Pansy is sitting. “But more importantly, I want you to know that, while I don’t mean to ascribe to you how to come to terms with everything that's changing, I do have to ask you to keep me out of these lies you keep spinning for your own good. My sister cares about you, and so does Malfoy, I think, and that’s fine, but I will not let you play us against each other any longer.”

She feels weirdly calm, looking down at Pansy, who now has a glint in her eye. Oddly serene. Now that she’s said her piece, she notices how her nails are biting into the wood of the door and makes herself lighten her hold, unfurls the fist she didn't know her other hand was making.

Pansy rises from the bed and closes in on her until Astoria has to claw her toes into her flats to keep from stepping backwards. Then she’s leaning over her, and Astoria is about to lose all the composure she’s managed to strike up until she realises that she’s standing next to a vanity from which Pansy extracts a monogrammed handkerchief. With all the poise in the world, she wipes at her cheeks, tosses the used fabric behind her and shoves her nose into the air in her typical fashion. She keeps this up for a moment and scrutinises Astoria, who’s holding her breath for no discernible reason, before she opts for a smirk that could almost be construed as a grin instead.

“Alright,” she says. And leaves it at that.

“Um. Alright?” Astoria repeats slowly, but Pansy seems to refuse to elaborate. Her smirk is only widening, her teeth showing now, that amused glint still in her eyes. “Alright! Well, that’s all I wanted to say, I suppose…”

Slytherins, she thinks. Maybe she should have listened to the Sorting Hat and not followed her sister. She is not equipped to handle this.

Blindsided by Pansy’s acquiescence, and, frankly, wholly creeped out by it, she starts moving towards the hallway again, backwards, unwilling to turn her back on the other girl, who’s still smirking at her.

“By the way. Malfoy?” Pansy deadpans before Astoria can close the door behind her. She’s still standing in the middle of the room, looking totally at ease now, back in her element.

“Uh, yeah. I guess,” she stammers and saves herself from further embarrassment by closing the door, vaguely wonders why it still feels so monumental to start calling him anything else.

She remains at the other side of the door for a while, frowning at it while she tries to get her thoughts back in order, make sense of it all. She is not successful.

Did she and Pansy just … come to an agreement?

Surely not. Right?

* * *

A couple of things happen after that.

First, her sister sneaks into her bed that night, her whispered apology contained beneath the drapes of Astoria’s canopy thanks to Abigail Hewlett’s snores on the opposite side of the room. For the first time since virtually ever, it is Daphne who brings up topics they typically avoid. Maybe it’s the time of night that gives her the necessary push, the darkness that she is entrusting fears with that she can’t have ever voiced before.

“I can’t say I fully understand it all yet,” she whispers next to her, “but I’d like for you to show me.”

She clasps Astoria’s hand with her own, squeezes, and Astoria squeezes back without hesitation. It hits her, how she hadn’t fully grasped that she’d lost her sister along the way until they found each other again. It’s not even like Astoria has the perfect answers to it all, unlearning her prejudice day by day, but for Daphne, it’ll have to do.

Next, Malfoy and her somehow find themselves partnering up in the kitchens, largely due to the other students simply not wanting to partner up with _them_. Astoria is loath to admit that it’s the best time she’s had in the kitchens since, well, since the holidays. They’re being all smug and superior in their little corner, maliciously giggling to themselves about the poor excuse of a batch of yorkshire puddings that Hewlett and Moore are grinning at, which they’d perfected in November.

It is also where she is forced to partake in the most awkward conversation of her few young years.

“So. You and that Ravenclaw.”

“His name is Raghu, yes.”

“He’s your best friend, correct?”

“I thought we already established that.”

“Your best _friend_. Correct?”

“He is that.”

“O…kay?” Malfoy keeps stealing glances at her, like he desperately wants to keep the topic going but cannot possibly figure out how to. Astoria is vividly reminded of the information that Pansy had thrown at her. Has to keep herself from preening.

“He was my first kiss, actually.”

“Oh, cool. That’s cool, yeah.”

“Hmm, I guess,” and this time it’s her that chances a quick glance at him through her curtain of hair, takes note of his flushed appearance, the downturn of his mouth, “Two years later he told me it’s what made him realise girls don’t do it for him.”

“Ah. _Oh_. Hm.”

Astoria can’t keep the giggle from escaping her any longer, equal parts mortified as well as curiously excited by Malfoy’s temporary speech impediment. “Yep. Real good for the ego, that.”

She looks at him again, pushes her hair behind her ear. He still won’t look at her, likely many more parts mortified than she is, but he’s looking suspiciously contented now.

Maybe he’s still the opposite of suave, but maybe she doesn’t mind so much.

And lastly, she will have to retract her earlier statement, because the current high score of most awkward conversation is thoroughly topped two days after the Yorkshire Pudding Incident.

Daphne has taken up permanent residence at the Ravenclaw table, still oddly tense around Pansy and even Tracey, and Astoria is incredibly weirded out by it. Typical to character, Raghu is acting like he’s always had the two Slytherins sitting next to him, even playfully threatens to duel Daphne to the death when she takes the last mince pie.

Astoria tries really hard not to feel like the third wheel at the table, both her sister and her best friend’s extroverted personalities easily overshadowing her quieter nature. Ultimately, she feels grateful to finally have these two people acknowledge each other’s existence, even if she sometimes catches Daphne’s longing stares toward the Slytherin table.

“Now, my dear sister, I won’t pry,” the older Greengrass says as a natural precursor of someone who is about to pry, “But are you and I going to have to have The Talk soon?”

She plops the last bit of her prized mince pie in her mouth and jerks her head in the general direction of where Malfoy is sitting in a pathetic imitation of subtlety, which, really, she, the Greengrass that really does belong in Slytherin, isn’t even trying at.

Astoria _squeaks_ at this, feeling not unlike her sister’s just batted a bludger at her windpipe, and furiously, no, nonchalantly starts loading up her plate a second time to buy herself time.

“First of all, I, unlike you, know what the internet is,” she says as calmly as she can, vehemently ignoring the way Raghu has slapped a hand over his mouth, the big gossip, “And secondly, _gross_ , Daphne, what is wrong with you?”

Daphne lifts one shoulder in a shrug and tugs at a strand of Astoria’s dark hair that is tumbling down her front. “I see the way he looks at you, and I see the way you look at him. I’m just glad _you’re_ not making me listen to how fit he is all over again. _Or_ the many uses you two must have found for whipped cream in the kitchens by now.”

“ _Daphne!_ ”

“I’m messing with you,” she manages in between her cackles. Raghu actually tries to high five her, but Astoria wrestles his arm down and makes sure to glare at the both of them the necessary number of seconds. “But if anything ever does happen, and even if it doesn’t, … you know you can talk to me about it, don’t you?” Daphne asks, and then Astoria knows that she’s referring to more than just whatever is going on with Malfoy.

She still feels massively unnerved by what she’s just had to endure but manages to crack a smile for Daphne's sake. Feeling endlessly grateful for this sister of hers, who’s everything Astoria isn’t but who loves her anyway.

“Of course, and so can you.” It’s another strangely intimate conversation in the most public part of Hogwarts, but she’ll take what she can get. “Oh, and Daph?”

Her sister is stealing pastries from her plate since Astoria’s still picking at her first slice of fruitcake, looking at her to continue. Astoria leans into her side conspiratorially and drops her voice to a whisper, only somewhat for show.

“He is _so_ fit.”

Daphne groans in agony, but she can definitely hear Raghu humming in agreement behind her, and at last, it’s Astoria who’s giggling uncontrollably. As it turns out, some awkward situations are worth the momentary urge to leave the continent indefinitely.

* * *

In the next few months, the situation largely remains the same, at a sort of stalemate. The main difference is that Daphne has apparently made up with Pansy and now alternates between the two tables. Astoria doesn’t really think it’s necessary, knows things between the sisters are good now, but is happy for the company anyway.

Other than that, her and Malfoy still mostly interact during the cooking sessions with the rest of the class, still mostly spending the time in their own little bubble, but at least Pansy seems to be staying true to her word, in favour of ignoring Astoria altogether whenever both happen to be in the common room at the same time.

That is to say, that is the impression Astoria is under when she arrives at the common room after dinner and finds it deserted.

Except for Pansy, who reveals herself by emerging from behind the couch like supervillains do. Looking miserable.

“There’s been an emergency,” she says in the most monotone drawl an emergency can possibly be announced in.

“What kind of emergency?”

“What do I know? House elf revolution. Troll in the dungeons.”

“ _Excuse me?_ ”

“And the only safe place is the kitchens!” Pansy says this with such faux urgency, throwing her hands into the air enthusiastically, it kind of terrifies Astoria. She’s never seen Pansy do something with enthusiasm in her life. Except for torment first years, probably. And snog Malfoy when Astoria hadn’t even yet understood why one would want to touch a _boy_.

“Excuse me.”

“Are you deaf?” Pansy barks, and _this_ Pansy Parkinson Astoria is comfortable with. Comparatively. “An _emergency_. Life or death and what have you. Now go on, will you.”

She’s got her hands on her hips, seemingly determined to stand there until Astoria retreats, and for lack of a better alternative, she surrenders, makes her way through the familiar path to the kitchens.

Halfway there, she realises that she is being sent by _Pansy_ , and despite their current truce, she has no idea what’s waiting for her. She stalls, looks behind her to see if she is being followed through the hallway.

There is no one she can see at current, but she’d rather be safe than sorry and is about to check further down the hall where she’d come from, until the suit of armour next to her rattles and her sister jumps out from behind it. Astoria isn’t ashamed to admit that she jumps a metre into the air. Maybe two.

“Where are you going? There’s a fire!” Daphne yells at her while her sister is clutching at her heart to ensure it hasn’t stopped, tugs at her arm to move her toward the kitchens again.

“A fire? I thought there’s a troll. And house elves?” she pants.

“Ugh, yes, that, aren’t you listening? Come on!” At least the enthusiasm is less creepy on her sister.

Astoria manages to get her arm out of Daphne’s death grip and stills again, forcing her sister to do the same.

“Alright, I’m going to go along with this emergency trouble, but you’re not pulling one over on me, are you?” she asks once her heart rate’s back to normal.

Daphne’s eyes widen at her question and she retracts her steps until she’s next to her sister again, looking at her with an uncharacteristic amount of innocence. “No! No, no, no. Just go to the kitchens, Tori. Trust me?”

Satisfied, Astoria gives a final nod and, again, starts on her way to the kitchens.

“Don’t do anything I would do!” Daphne yells after her, but when Astoria looks back, she’s already gone.

With that very reassuring bit of advice, Astoria feels adequately nervous when she tickles the pear, something she has now done so often eating them has started to make her uncomfortable.

Stepping through the portrait and finally convinced that her inevitable doom isn’t waiting in front of her, she is fairly certain that she has a good idea just what and who is in fact waiting inside, so she is on the verge of calling for Malfoy when the most exquisite smell wafts past her.

Lead more by her nose rather than any of her other senses, Astoria plucks up her courage and steps into the kitchens, locates the source of the smell. Or the hundreds of sources, more like.

Inside of the room, two of the long tables have been turned and pushed together in order to take up the entire width of the room. They are draped in white tablecloth, and on them, dozens of little bowls are scattered, taking up the whole space. Just in front of this, a smaller, round table and two chairs are set up and equally decorated, and Astoria thinks she recognises the set from the common room.

In front of the middle of the two tables is where she finds Malfoy, ladling dough into a pristine looking waffle iron, a plate stacked with waffles already next to him.

The first thing that Astoria thinks to say is that it’s a Sunday. Being in the kitchens outside of class days feels much too intimate somehow.

“Pansy said there’s a troll in the dungeons. Possibly on fire,” is what she actually says, still right at the entrance, feeling unsure of herself.

Malfoy turns to her, and Astoria can’t stop staring at the mess that is his hair, like he’s run his hands through it countless times. “Are you kidding m— Of course. How naïve of me, to trust her to _stick to the plan_.”

“There was a plan?”

“Of _course_ there was a plan. It was ingenious. And cunning,” he bemoans, but he’s grinning right at her, and yeah, he is so fit. “Come here.”

He takes another plate and loads it with one of the waffles, holds it out for Astoria. Hesitantly, she closes the distance and accepts it, before her eyes fall on the arrangement of bowls once more and she gasps.

“Are these all toppings?” she asks the obvious.

“Yeah.”

“You made waffles for me!” she states the obvious.

“The house elves helped me with buying everything. I think they knew one of my father’s elves? One of them kicked me in the shin.”

Astoria is embarrassed to say that she chortles at that, and with somewhat of a sense of normalcy returning to the room, she sets to choosing toppings for her waffle. There’s so many of them, she has to force herself to stop after she’s strewn hundreds and thousands on top of a fried egg.

“What’s the goal of this plan of yours?” she asks after she’s sat down on the table in front of the buffet, waits for Malfoy to be finished as well before tucking in.

“I’ll tell you when it works out,” he says mysteriously, but she doesn’t miss that he won’t meet her eyes for a while after. Instead, he procures two bottles of butterbeer out of nowhere and uncaps one for her.

“If the goal was to make up for your waffle debt it worked out, alright. These are _delicious_. And I’m eating chocolate with asparagus.”

Malfoy smiles at her, and she can’t help but smile back, but somehow, he looks a little sad, still. “I also wanted to apologise. Properly this time. I’m so sorry for the shite I spouted during the holidays, I don’t want to make any excuses and, honestly, I can’t even think of any other than that I’m a proper git.”

Astoria’s smile falters a bit at the reminder. He looks so utterly guilty that she is almost tempted to try and lighten the mood a bit but is stopped when she remembers how rotten he had made her feel. When Malfoy notices the change of her expression, he sets down his cutlery and looks at her, brows furrowed.

“You were just … so nice to me, and I couldn’t understand why you would bother. At first, I thought this was all Pansy’s doing, especially when she kept asking about you and I kept expecting it to implode, so when it actually did, naturally, I cocked it all up even more, but you didn’t deserve that at all, and I like you so much, you’re so much better than me, and all the rest of us, why would you even—”

“Draco,” Astoria interrupts, face burning but her smile back in full force. He’s a little flushed himself, eyes looking almost dazed as his gaze flicks between her eyes, and Astoria wonders if it’s because of what she’s called him, or because he’d just been rambling without any air intake whatsoever. “I forgive you.”

Draco, and, yeah, she could get used to this, looks even more lost at this, his lips slightly parted as he takes in her words. “You do?”

“I do. Also, someone had to put a stop to that before all the waffles go stale.”

He finally seems to get some of his footing back and returns her smile with a grin and picks up his knife and fork again.

“Seeing as the entertainment I’ve planned for the evening doesn’t go much further beyond me snivelling and bribing you with heated dough, I suppose we can’t have that.”

They keep smiling at each other like big goofs until Astoria is certain all the blood in her body has rushed to her head, and attempts to at least appear a tad more collected by focusing on her quickly disappearing waffle instead.

“How on earth did you get Pansy to help you?” she asks once she’s finished her first and is back at the buffet table plating a second waffle, the assortments of toppings too tempting not to.

“She volunteered, actually.”

Astoria turns back to where he is sitting, surprised. She looks down at her plate sceptically. “So, these are poisoned.”

Before she can start wondering if she took it too far, Draco chuckles and comes to join her. She always forgets how much taller he is until he’s right in front of her, that trademark smirk on his face that she hasn’t gotten to see all term. She thinks back on the first weeks of it, when he’d looked so pale and malnourished, she barely recognised him barring the signature Malfoy hair. She wonders vainly if she looks better too, what he sees when he looks down at her.

“It’s the Slytherin apology, how do you not recognise it? For example, Daphne got an empty dorm for an hour last week, curiously while Nott had a free period.”

“Merlin, stop talking, please,” Astoria groans and hides her face behind her free hand while Malfoy is busy laughing at her misery. Daphne and she are well on their way to being best friends again, but there are definite limits. “We’re all best friends, then?”

“I think I am obligated to inform you that we are all terrible human beings and I have to strongly advise against it,” he says, and he’s being playful now, and to her absolute chagrin, she giggles. He sobers up a little, looks down at his feet and rubs the back of his hair, and Astoria is terribly grateful that she is still clutching her plate simply for something to do. “But truly, I know I don’t deserve it, but if you’re still willing to take a chance on me, I will very selfishly have to take you up on that.”

“I think that can be arranged,” she replies after a very brief interlude of pretending to consider it.

Draco relieves her of the emotional support plate in her hands and places it down behind her. She realises with a start that, if one were to squint and tilt their head a little, he’s almost got her pinned to the tables, especially seeing as he’s still got one of his hands placed on one of them.

“Good. I’m glad,” he mumbles, his voice throaty in a way she’s never heard before.

Just as he’s starting to lean in, for _Salazar knows what_ , and Astoria’s eyes pop out of her skull, the loud pop of apparition sounds behind them, and the two red-faced Slytherins scramble to put distance between themselves. Frantically, Astoria pulls at her clothing and reaches up to tidy her hair before she dares to check who has intruded on the two, feeling disproportionately guilty considering that nothing has actually happened.

“Binny is obligated to interrupt any uncouth business in the kitchens. Binny has to ask you to leave.”

In mere seconds, the two have cleared the room of any evidence, stoically refusing to meet each other’s eyes as they rush toward the exit while the house elf has got his all too judgmental ones trained on them.

“I knew they had it out for me,” Draco grumbles, and Astoria starts and cannot stop laughing as they stumble out of the portrait, feeling much too light-headed for her own good.

They walk back to the common room together.

* * *

When Astoria braves her way into the Great Hall the morning after, which sounds a great deal more monumental than their awkward wishes of good night realistically merit, she goes to sit at the Ravenclaw table out of pure habit.

“I think your sister is trying to get your attention,” Raghu manages through his mouthful of oatmeal, and sure enough, when Astoria looks up she finds Daphne sitting at the Slytherin table, frantically waving, “I think you should join her before she takes Parkinson’s eye out.”

Pansy’s to the right of Daphne, leaning away from her and glaring up at her in annoyance. But when she turns and sees who her friend is making a commotion for, she also looks at Astoria expectantly, her eyebrows raised. Just behind them there’s Draco, staring down at his breakfast and seemingly very content with keeping it that way with a very curious flush crawling up his neck.

Taking in all this, Astoria is momentarily overcome with a long absent feeling of hope, suddenly struck with the previously inconceivable notion that perhaps things really are changing, how nice it would be to have been mistaken, that she finds herself grinning down at her best friend.

“Do you want to join us?” she asks him, surprised by how much she wants him to say yes.

Raghu starts looking slightly alarmed, but finds it in himself to smile up at her reassuringly. “Ah, thanks but, I don’t think so. You go on ahead, though.”

“Are you sure?” she asks, looking between him and where Daphne is still waving at her, torn.

“Yeah, it’s a little much, to be honest. Maybe some other time.”

But he’s still smiling at her, and even though it does put a bit of a damper on her mood, she feels so glad he’ll even consider it that she reaches down to give him a quick hug before moving to the Slytherins.

Very unsuspiciously so, when she arrives, there’s a vacant spot right next to Draco, like someone's told Theo to scoot over a bit. To Astoria’s credit, she only freezes for a few seconds before coming to sit down next to him, keeping a careful eye on his reaction.

“Good morning,” he says quietly, and while she’s completely enamoured by the way one corner of his mouth ticks up, she nearly misses him pushing a plate of waffles in front of her and only belatedly realises that he is smirking at her.

Blushing, she mumbles a greeting back and quickly looks up and sees that Pansy is busy rolling her eyes at them. Meanwhile, Daphne is steadily turning into the most embarrassing sibling of all Wizarding Britain. And they had such a good run.

“ _Did you kiss?_ ” Daphne mouths, pointing at her own lips as if Astoria isn’t already beet red.

She mouths back a big fat no, shaking her head with as much indignation as can be achieved while remaining subtle, chancing a glance to her side to make sure Draco’s eyes are fixed on his food.

Loading up her plate, with a croissant and fruit and _no_ _waffles whatsoever_ , thank you very much, she’s half-heartedly listening to Daphne’s daily recap of The Daily Prophet’s society pages, with some very choice commentary by Pansy, and she comes to discover another emotion she hasn’t exactly felt in some time.

She realises that she feels happy, truly happy, something so terribly simple and uninspired, but then she didn’t expect things to ever be simple again.

Draco’s knuckles are just a hairsbreadth away from brushing her hand on the space in between where they are sitting on the bench, and they haven’t even kissed yet, which Astoria has come to accept is something she is quite eager about. And things definitely aren’t perfect, not even close.

But it feels like the start of something that might be. And that might just be enough.

* * *

At King’s Cross a few months later, when everyone’s about to part, and Draco’s just spotted his mother in the crowd, she has a moment of panic where she almost thrusts her hand out to shake his but sticks to just standing there in mid-motion, feeling paralysed.

He kisses her instead.

“Would you look at that. My plan worked out.”

“Your plan?” she asks distractedly, still winded from what just occurred, leaning back into him before her brain has fully caught up.

“To woo you, of course. Keep up, Greengrass.”

Maybe Draco Malfoy is a tiny bit suave, after all.


End file.
